BOULDER -- Boulder County Libertarian Party chairman Ralph Shnelvar asked the Boulder County District Court on Friday to order that County Clerk Hillary Hall allow political parties' designated election watchers to observe all her staff's stages of handling the completed 2012 general election ballots the county is getting back from absentee voters.

In a lawsuit filed Friday, Shnelvar, who's also one of his party's election watchers, alleged that Hall has violated state law earlier this month by denying authorized election watchers' ability "to meaningfully observe the handling" of mail-in absentee ballots and the ballots that voters active-duty members of the military and citizens living overseas have been sending back.

Shnelvar

Under a court order proposed by Shnelvar's attorneys, Hall would be instructed to immediately swear him and other watchers in -- something Shnelvar contends the county clerk's staff has thus far refused to do -- and allow those watchers reasonable access to observe the handling of mail-in ballots and ballots returned by voters under procedures set forth in the Uniformed Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.

That, Shnelvar's attorneys have proposed, should include "the receiving and bundling of ballots received by election officials," allowing the watches to witness the processing and counting of those absentee ballots.

Shnelvar is asking the court to order that watchers be permitted to be in "reasonable proximity" of that ballot handling, putting them in the same room as the documents and close enough "to be able to read documents, writings or other screens" and to hear the county clerk's staff's election-related discussions while those ballots are being processed and counted.

Hall
(.)

Hall said in a Friday afternoon interview and prepared statement that "we are completely in compliance" with state law and Secretary of State Scott Gessler's election-watcher guidelines and will continue to be in compliance through the ballot processing procedures used in Boulder County.

Hall said that on Thursday, she'd emailed Shnelvar and the chairmen of the county's Democratic and Republican parties that lists the schedule of her office's election activities through Election Day -- activities, she wrote those party chairmen, that can be observed by their parties' appointed watchers. She said that included the schedule for processing military and overseas ballots and other ballots.

"We've let them know when there are activities taking place and when they can come and watch."

Hall said Shnelvar's lawsuit "feels really premature," since official ballot processing activities weren't even getting under way until this weekend.

That, according to the schedule, includes verifying signatures of some of the initial mail ballots that her office has received, the printing out of completed emailed ballots from military and overseas voters.

"Mr. Shnelvar knows when these ballots are being processed and knows he can attend," Hall said.

From this weekend on, "we'll be giving access to the watchers," Hall said, but before this weekend, there were "no processes that they were eligible to watch" under state law.

She said she and her staff value the role of election watchers in the process, and "when we're actually doing things, we're happy to have them come and observe us."

When a small group of watchers complained earlier this month about not having been allowed to closely observe incoming Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act ballots on Oct. 8, deputy county attorney David Hughes wrote that Hall believed her actions at that point were consistent with state law and the secretary of state's watcher guidelines.

Hughes said at the time that Hall wouldn't actually be processing any of those ballots until Oct. 19, "at which time watchers will be allowed to observe the process in the vote processing area."

It was not immediately clear on Friday how quickly Shnelvar's lawsuit might wind up being heard by a Boulder district judge.

M. Robin Repass, one of Shnelvar's attorneys in the lawsuit, said in an email that she expects the case to be assigned to a judge on Monday morning. She said Shnelvar is asking that the court set a hearing promptly.

"I hope that this gets resolved quickly," said Independence Institute president Jon Caldara.

"I'm sure the people in the Boulder County clerk's office are highly ethical people," Caldara said in a statement. "But highly ethical people let citizens verify the work they are doing."

Caldara, who's also a Boulder resident, stressed in an interview that he has no reason to believe Hall and her staff would mishandle any ballots. But he said that "transparency needs to be followed" by allowing the officially appointed election watchers to witness and verify the entire election process.

Shnelvar, who's also the American Constitution Party's Boulder County vice chairman as well as the county Libertarian chairman, said in an interview that "we're supposed to observe every step of the election process," including the initial receipt of the ballots cast by overseas and military voters.

"Election transparency is very important to us, " Shnelvar said about what he called "a loose coalition of people" that includes Republicans as well as Libertarians and American Constitution Party members -- a group he said has asked "that the watchers be able to actually watch during the entire process."

Earlier Friday, before Shnelvar's lawsuit was filed, he was one of about a dozen demonstrators who gathered outside the county clerk's Boulder headquarters for a "Let Us Watch" rally calling upon Boulder County residents -- according to a pre-rally flier distributed by its organizers -- to "show the county clerk and secretary of state that you want an honest election."

Brad Turner, a communications specialist in the clerk's office, said he handed out copies of the ballot-processing procedures' watchers' schedule to people attending that rally.

Local duo joining overseas exhibition excursionFilippo Swartz went to Italy, where his mother was born and he spent the first year or so of his life, every summer until he had to stick around to be a part of summer football activities for the Longmont High School team. Full Story

MacIntyre says the completed project will be best in Pac-12There were bulldozers, hard hats, mud, concrete trucks, blueprints, mud, cranes, lots of noise and, uh, mud, during the last recruiting cycle when Colorado football coach Mike MacIntyre brought recruits to campus. Full Story

Most people don't play guitar like Grayson Erhard does. That's because most people can't play guitar like he does. The guitarist for Fort Collins' Aspen Hourglass often uses a difficult two-hands-on-the-fretboard technique that Eddie Van Halen first popularized but which players such as Erhard have developed beyond pop-rock vulgarity.
Full Story